TimePilot Definitions

Handling Breaks

How do you handle breaks?Work breaks are generally considered paid time, and therefore employees do not
have to clock out and then clock in. But there may be times when
you want to monitor employees' breaks to ensure they aren't taking extra time,
or even penalize employees who take longer breaks than they should. These functions are set up
when you add or edit a shift schedule (TimePilot Central > Setup menu > Shift
Setup).

Note: To use these functions, employees must
clock out when they start their break and clock back in when they end their
break.

There are two levels available, Break Monitoring and Break Penalty:

Break Monitoring

With Break Monitoring enabled, if an employee clocks out and back in within
the number of minutes specified for their break time, the two transactions are
recorded and labeled as breaks, which causes the software to ignore them when it
calculates the employee's work hours. If the employee exceeds his or her break time,
the transactions are recorded as normal out and in transactions. To use this
function, click the checkbox in the Break Monitoring box and enter the number of
minutes for your break.

If you just want to keep track of paid employee breaks and not
penalize employees if they if they go over by a few minutes, set the number of minutes to a
length of time greater than the break time, but be sure to keep that number of
minutes fewer than you allow for lunch.

Example, using the same employees as in the examples at left:

You set the Break Monitoring time period to 20 minutes. The employees clock
out at the start of their break and clock back in 12 minutes later. They took 2
extra minutes on break, but because they kept the time to less than 20 minutes,
here's what will happen:

The TimePilot software records the employees' clock-ins and clock-outs,
so you can see they took 12 minutes instead of 10.

When the software calculates work hours, it will ignore the two break
transactions because they occurred less than 20 minutes apart.

Your employees get a paid 10-minute break each morning, so you set the Break
Monitoring time period to 10 minutes. The employees clock out at the start of
their break and clock back in 9 minutes later. Here's what will happen:

The TimePilot software records the employees' clock-outs and clock-ins,
so you can see they took a 9-minute break.

When the software calculates work hours, it will ignore the two break
transactions because they occurred less than 10 minutes apart, effectively
keeping the employees "on the clock" through their break period.

Example #2, using the same situation:

Your employees clock out at the start of their break and clock back in 12
minutes later. They took 2 extra minutes on break, so here's what will happen:

The TimePilot software records the employees' clock-outs and clock-ins, so you can see they
took 12 minutes instead of 10 in TimePilot Central.

When the software calculates the employees' work hours, it will deduct 12
minutes from their time. To avoid having this time deducted, see the TimePilot
Tip at right.

Break Penalty

You might want to continue to pay employees for their breaks and only
penalize them for the extra time they take. Break Penalty works with Break
Monitoring, allowing you to do this. Here's how to set up this function:

Enable Break Monitoring and set the time to the number of minutes of
your break.

Click the checkbox next to Break Penalty and enter the sum of the break time
plus the number of minutes during which the employee would be penalized. Only
the number of minutes he or she was late returning from break will be deducted
from their work hours. If the employee exceeds his or her break time by more
than the number of minutes you set, the transactions are recorded as normal out
and in transactions.

An example:

As in the previous examples, your employees get a paid 10-minute break each
morning. You want to give them a 10-minute period during which they are only
penalized the number of minutes they are late returning from break; if they are
more than 10 minutes late, their transactions will be recorded as normal out and
in transactions, resulting in the deduction of the break time plus the excess
time they were gone. To do so, you set your Break Monitoring to 10 minutes and Break
Penalty to 20 minutes. Here's what will happen:

Employee No. 1 clocks out at 10 a.m. and back in at 10:09. The software
records the transactions, but does not deduct the 9 minutes from the employee’s
work time.

Employee No. 2 clocks out for break at 10 a.m. but
doesn’t clock back in until 10:15 (returning 5 minutes late). The software
records the transactions, but because the number of minutes taken is within the
Break Penalty parameters, the software will deduct only 5 minutes from the employee’s work
hours.

Employee No. 3 clocks out for break at 10 a.m. but
doesn’t clock back in until 10:25 (returning 15 minutes late). The software
records the transactions; because the number of minutes taken is beyond the
Break Penalty parameters, the software will treat them as normal out and in
transactions.